All posts in US News

Meet Abu Omar: Al Qaeda Busted Him Out of Abu Ghraib. Now He Fights in Syria

Waiting for the tram in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep, Abu Omar is on his way to the mall. No groceries today, his shopping list includes a Turkish-made tablet computer and a small GPS navigation device loaded with digital maps of the Middle East.

“It’s nothing special,” says Abu Omar, an Iraqi national, as he puts the goods in his rucksack. “But this stuff might come in handy after I make it to Syria.”

Abu Omar, a handsome young man with long black hair, is not the only one making the trek to Syria. Hundreds of Iraqi prisoners, mostly suspected or convicted jihadists, were freed in July after al Qaeda-linked militants staged a deadly jailbreak at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. At the time, Iraqi and Western authorities feared that some of those men would travel to Syria, helping to fuel the rise of extremist groups there. Those fears have now become a reality.

10/03/2013 · No Comments Continue Reading →

Google Begs Court to Reconsider Ruling That Wi-Fi Sniffing Is Wiretapping

Google is asking a federal appeals court to reconsider a recent ruling finding Google potentially liable for wiretapping when it secretly intercepted data on open Wi-Fi routers.

The Mountain View-based company said the September 10 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will create “confusion” (.pdf) about which over-the-air signals are protected by the Wiretap Act, including broadcast television.

The case concerns nearly a dozen combined lawsuits seeking damages from Google for eavesdropping on open Wi-Fi networks from its Street View mapping cars. The vehicles, which rolled through neighborhoods around the world, were equipped with Wi-Fi–sniffing hardware to record the names and MAC addresses of routers to improve Google location-specific services. But the cars also gathered snippets of content.

The search giant petitioned the San Francisco-based appeals court to reconsider its decision that allowed the case to proceed at trial — a ruling that upended Google’s defense.

Google claimed it is was legal to intercept data from unencrypted, or non-password-protected Wi-Fi networks. Google said open Wi-Fi networks are “radio communications” like AM/FM radio, citizens’ band and police and fire bands, and are “readily accessible” to the general public and exempt from the Wiretap Act — a position the appeals court rejected.

09/25/2013 · No Comments Continue Reading →

The Real Reason You’re Mad at the NSA

“What’s really going on here?” That’s the question I typically ask students to kick-start a discussion about some aspect of American intelligence at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where I teach a graduate course on the subject.

This same question might fairly be asked about the controversy dominating the news since the leak that revealed the intelligence community’s highly classified electronic surveillance program. Why are we so fascinated with this case? Why are some Americans outraged at the government while others are outraged at the leaker? Why do so many of us have such firm and passionate views about all of this?

At one level, the answer is simple: Intelligence is a sexy subject, particularly in the post-9/11 era. And the surveillance program was a secret, so who wouldn’t be interested? But this controversy taps into deeper cultural strains that go to the very heart of the intelligence community’s role in America, and perhaps our maturation as a nation. The bottom line is that intelligence, as a profession, still does not sit comfortably in our polity. There are a number of reasons for this.

06/17/2013 · Comments Off on The Real Reason You’re Mad at the NSA Continue Reading →

Israel Thwarts Hamas Terror Plots Involving Qatar-based Terrorist

Today Israeli authorities announced the arrest of a Hamas operative in the West Bank who was “planning to carry out terror attacks involving shooting and kidnapping Israelis.” Baker Atallah Samiach Saad, a resident of Ramallah, was helped in planning his attacks by a Hamas terrorist released in the exchange for Gilad Shalit in October 2011. According to the Israel Defense Forces, Saad met Qatar-based Hisham Abed Elkader Ibrahim Hajaz in April in Jordan.

Hajaz was exiled to Qatar as part of the exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in October 2011. Prior to being exiled, Hajaz had been given 10 life sentences for his role in terror attacks against Israelis between 2001 and 2003.

During the April meeting in Jordan, Hajaz encouraged Saad to carry out terror attacks against Israelis, including kidnappings. Saad was also asked to recruit more people to carry out additional attacks.

06/13/2013 · Comments Off on Israel Thwarts Hamas Terror Plots Involving Qatar-based Terrorist Continue Reading →

NSA Wired Into Top Internet Companies’ Servers, Including Google and Facebook

As if news of the National Security Agency collecting phone records on millions of Americans wasn’t enough, a new report reveals that the NSA and FBI are directly tapped into central servers at nine U.S. internet firms, in order to provide constant monitoring of audio, video, photos, emails and documents as well as connection logs.

The companies whose servers are being mined are reportedly Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. The classified program, dubbed PRISM, has been in operation since 2007 and has been a leading source of intelligence fed to the president in his daily intelligence briefings, according to the Washington Post, which broke the story at the same time as the Guardian today.

06/06/2013 · Comments Off on NSA Wired Into Top Internet Companies’ Servers, Including Google and Facebook Continue Reading →

NSA Granted Order to Snag Millions of Verizon Call Records for 3 Months

The National Security Agency obtained a court order to collect the call records of millions of Verizon customers, according to a secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The sweeping order, issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, requires Verizon to give the NSA metadata on all calls within the U.S. and between the U.S. and foreign countries on an “ongoing, daily basis” for three months.

The data includes the phone numbers of both parties involved in the calls, the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number for mobile callers, calling card numbers used in the call, and the time and duration of the calls. It does not include the name or address of the subscriber or other account information, nor does it allow the content of calls to be recorded and collected. It may, however, include the location of the calls through cell site data.

The classified order was issued to the FBI by the secretive court on April 25 and allows the government to collect data until July 19 and hand it over to the NSA. The order came with a gag requirement that prevents Verizon from disclosing its existence. It covers only Verizon, and it’s not clear if other phone companies received similar orders.

06/05/2013 · Comments Off on NSA Granted Order to Snag Millions of Verizon Call Records for 3 Months Continue Reading →

Transgender Navy SEAL Publishes Book Entitled ‘Warrior Princess’

A former Navy SEAL has come out publicly to say she is now a woman. Kristin Beck, formerly Chris Beck served 20 years as a Navy SEAL. Beck co-wrote a book entitled “Warrior Princess,” which was published over the weekend. According the description on Amazon, the book is the journey of a girl in a man’s body and her road to self-actualization as a woman amdist the PTSD of war, family rejection and our society’s strict gender rules and perceptions. It is about a fight to be free inside one’s own body, a fight that requires the strength of a Warrior Princess.

A former SEAL, Brandon Webb, spoke of Beck’s reputation in the SEALs as a good one and said she was, by all appearances, the “consummate guy’s guy.”

Source: Breitbart

06/04/2013 · Comments Off on Transgender Navy SEAL Publishes Book Entitled ‘Warrior Princess’ Continue Reading →

Data Mining Wikipedia in Real Time for Disaster Response

My colleague Fernando Diaz has continued working on an interesting Wikipedia project since he first discussed the idea with me last year. Since Wikipedia is increasingly used to crowdsource live reports on breaking news such as sudden-onset humanitarian crisis and disasters, why not mine these pages for structured information relevant to humanitarian response professionals?

06/04/2013 · Comments Off on Data Mining Wikipedia in Real Time for Disaster Response Continue Reading →

American Gets Targeted by Digital Spy Tool Sold to Foreign Governments

The email appeared to come from a trusted colleague at a renowned academic institution and referenced a subject that was a hot-button issue for the recipient, including a link to a website where she could obtain more information about it.

The email contained a link to a web site in Turkey, where a malicious downloader file was waiting to install on her computer…

But when the recipient looked closely at the sender’s email address, a tell-tale misspelling gave the phishing attempt away — the email purported to come from a professor at Harvard University, but instead of harvard.edu, the email address read “hardward.edu”.

Not exactly a professional con-job from nation-state hackers, but that’s exactly who may have sent the email to an American woman, who believes she was targeted by forces in Turkey connected to or sympathetic to the powerful Gülen Movement, which has infiltrated parts of the Turkish government.

06/04/2013 · Comments Off on American Gets Targeted by Digital Spy Tool Sold to Foreign Governments Continue Reading →

Argentine Prosecutor Accuses Iran of Establishing Terror Network in Latin America

On May 29, Alberto Nisman, the Argentine prosecutor who investigated the 1994 AMIA bombing, issued a 500-page indictment that accused Iran of establishing terror networks throughout Latin America since the 1980s. The Iranian regime infiltrated “several South American countries by building local clandestine intelligence stations designed to sponsor, foster and execute terrorist attacks, within the principles to export the Islamic revolution,” a two-page summary of the report obtained by The Long War Journal stated.

In a 31-page summary report obtained by The Long War Journal, Nisman said that Iran’s “clandestine intelligence stations and operative agents … are used to execute terrorist attacks when the Iranian regime decides so, both directly or through its proxy, the terrorist organization Hezbollah.” Nisman also warned that Iran could seek to use sleeper cells. While presenting the indictment on May 29, Nisman reportedly said that members of the sleeper cells “[s]ometimes … die having never received the order to attack.”

Iran has set up intelligence bases in a number of South American countries, according to Nisman, including, but not limited to: Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname. Nisman, the summary stated, plans to send his indictment “to the pertinent judicial authorities” in the various countries. A copy of the indictment is also being sent to US authorities.

05/30/2013 · Comments Off on Argentine Prosecutor Accuses Iran of Establishing Terror Network in Latin America Continue Reading →
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